Attahiru Jega: Lecturers conspired with politicians to rig elections

Former Chairman of the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), Attahiru Jega, has faulted Nigeria’s electoral system describing it as being under assault.

Jega further alleged that politicians used university lecturers to commit irregularities during the elections, particularly in Kano state.

The former INEC chairman spoke at the annual conference of the Fulbright Alumni Association of Nigeria at Bayero University Kano (BUK) and said the BUK lecturers who worked with politicians to perpetrate “all sorts of irregularities” betrayed the confidence reposed on them by compromising the electoral process.

“I think the major crisis in Nigeria’s democracy is that our electoral integrity has been under assault, compromised and undermined by those who have control over the process,” he said.

“Look at what happened during the last elections, and the story of irregularities being spread even in the four walls of BUK.

“The politicians, through crooked means, got alliances with lecturers in the university to compromise the system and they perpetrated all sort of irregularities, which pave way for a faulty process for the continued entrenchment of bad people in governance.

“Maybe, I am preaching to the converted or I am talking nonsense but frankly speaking, I am beginning to think that we are not taking the obligations of scholarship and intellectual engagement with the seriousness it deserves.”

Thailand’s Constitutional Court on Thursday suspended the leader of the progressive anti-junta Future Forward Party’s status as an elected member of parliament while determining whether to disqualify him.